Easter traffic stats: Males, young people and pedestrians account for more deaths

There was a high number of traffic accidents and fatalities this Easter long weekend, many involving pedestrians and young people.

This is according to the road safety statistics released by Sindisiwe Chikunga, the minister of transport, on Friday.

“The total number of fatal crashes this year is 185, resulting in 225 fatalities, as opposed to the same period the previous year when we recorded 135 fatal crashes that resulted in 161 fatalities,” she said.

“The statistics on gender classification show there was a decrease in female fatalities from 28% in 2022 to 19% in 2023. Male fatalities increased from 67% in 2022 to 70%.

“Most of these are young, aspiring professionals whose careers were beginning to shine. They possessed the skills needed to grow our country’s economy and reduce poverty, inequality and underdevelopment.

“An increase in fatalities was recorded in all provinces except in Mpumalanga, Western Cape and North West, and we congratulate these provinces for the work well done.

“The high number of road users who perished were pedestrians, who accounted for 44.4%, followed by passengers at 27.7%. Drivers accounted for 25.6%, cyclists at 1.3%, while the road user status of 1% could not be determined,” she said.

The highest number of pedestrians died in collisions in the Western Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

The highest number of deaths occurred on Friday and the lowest on Thursday. Most occurred at 3pm and 10pm and were predominantly hit-and-run crashes, single vehicles overturning, pedestrian collisions and head-on collisions, the statistics showed.

“Human factors, which include reckless and negligent driving, were the most prominent in all fatalities at 96.2%, followed by road and environmental factors at 4.5%, while vehicle factors were 1.1%,” Chikunga said..

“The unacceptably high contribution of human factors reflects poor driving habits of our motorists and is also a reflection of the high number of incompetent drivers on the roads.

“We are scaling up anti-corruption interventions including the use of technology such as the computerised learner licence testing sheets, including the smart DLTs, which we will be rolling out throughout the country.”

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.